🌶️ Hot Fudge Sunday for 2025-10-19

October 19, 2025

Last Week

NexusTek published The Cybersecurity Awareness Month Challenge: Can Your Team Pass This Real-World Test?

NexusTek Earns CRN’s 2025 Triple Crown–Honored for Growth, Innovation, and Technical Excellence

This Week

Work travel picks up again this week and through end of year.

Hot Fudge Daily Digest

📈 Markets Monday for 2025-10-13

My screener is getting closer to my legacy Yahoo version (51 stocks!). Today saw a significant rally across several key technology sectors. Quantum computing, digital currency miners, semiconductors, and energy technology were the standout themes, with numerous companies posting significant gains.

🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday for 2025-10-14

💰 Funding continues to favor AI flavor

• ClaimSorted (AI for insurance claims): $13.3M
• Glue (AI-first Slack competitor): $20M
• Flow Engineering (AI-native collaborative hardware development): $23M
• Dezerv (AI-augmented wealth management startup): ~$40M
• Dexory (AI-optimized autonomous warehouse robots): $165M
• Oura (AI-insights wearables): $900M

🤪 Wacky Wednesday for 2025-10-15

First, a wacky wonderful video. Second, a wayback nostalgia moment. Third, a whoa things are changing fast.

Wacky

Gboard ダイヤルバージョン / Gboard Dial Version

• Engineering
• Enjoyment
• Delight

Wayback

Thinking Machines Corporation Founded

• Founded in 1983
• Pioneers in supercomputing
• One of the early .com domains

Whoa

Spyglass: Spotify & Netflix Gun for YouTube’s Eyeballs

• User-generated content (UGC)
• Streaming
• Partners

🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2025-10-16

5 Years Ago: October 16, 2020

On this day five years ago, iPhone democratized lidar and 5G connectivity. Social media platforms scrutiny intensified leading up to the U.S. presidential election. The pandemic’s influence had shifted remote knowledge work and boosted the fortunes of streaming and collaboration software while some knowledge work companies experimented with return to office.

10 Years Ago: October 16, 2015

A decade back, the industry was still processing the “unicorn” era that was in full swing, with private tech companies achieving sky-high valuations via funding feats that defied economic gravity (reality?). On the consumer front, enthusiasts of drone technology learned they would be required to register their drone with the U.S. Department of Transportation.

15 Years Ago: October 16, 2010

Fifteen years ago, the “app economy” was just beginning to explode with Apple’s App Store crossing 300,000 apps (today that number is +2M!). One of those apps launched a few weeks prior as “Burbn Beta” as a simple photo-sharing app that received around 25,000 downloads… now called Instagram (today that number is ~4B downloads).

✅ Final Thoughts Friday for 2025-10-17

Ping. Power. Plate. This was the appeal of a data center.

The biggest story of the week was the $40B acquisition of ping, POWER, and plate represented by Aligned Data Centers.

An investment consortium of BlackRock, GIP, MGX, NVIDIA, xAI, and Microsoft in a deal to buy data centers capable of delivering up to 5GW of power is a clear signal that the AI physical infrastructure is some of the most valuable real estate on the planet but not because of square footage or views of the city, mountains, or a body of water. Rather, $8M/MW, is less about the cost of land and buildings and more about securing a vast and strategic portfolio of power capacity that is essential to energize hardware that supports AI workloads.

🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday for 2025-10-18

Once again, we sift through the digital aftermath of a Friday news cycle to find the story that was meant to be a footnote, not a headline. This week’s selection is from Google’s 5+ year saga to end third-party cookies with the Privacy Sandbox initiative.

Paradoxically, it will be Google’s Privacy Sandbox and key technologies going away after years of regulatory debates followed by detours. So, enjoy those not-quite-dead-yet third-party cookies with a nice tall glass of spilled privacy milk. 🍪🥛

#OpenToWork Weekly

I participated in a #NeverSearchAlone #JSC after rebooting Cuthrell Consulting and joining NexusTek.

I added those #OpenToWork from my LinkedIn network to this newsletter. Over time, we’ve grown an Alumni 🎉 section for those that transitioned to their next career adventure.

Alumni 🎉

• Congrats Brian Booden 🎉
• Congrats Sam Aiello 🎉
• Congrats Nathan Clyker 🎉
• Congrats Kelly Britt 🎉
• Congrats Tamera Rousseau King 🎉
• Congrats Thomas Chatham 🎉
• Congrats Dan Kelleher 🎉
• Congrats Jarrod Weise 🎉
• Congrats Karl Edwards 🎉
• Congrats Paul Lysko 🎉
• Congrats Bob Lima, PMP 🎉
• Congrats Rich Green 🎉
• Congrats Sheri Gearhart 🎉
• Congrats Shianna Maxwell 🎉
• Congrats Richard Arnesen! 🎉

Those in my network that are #OpenToWork:

• Jennifer Fisher - Full-Cycle Recruiter
• Scott Place - High Performance Sales Rep
• Trevor Schulz - 20+ Years in Tech Sales | Loyal, Dedicated, and Ready to Work Today
• Elizabeth Quintanilla - Fractional CMO, Digital Marketing Consultant & Coach, Marketing Gunslinger
• Barbara Hadley, EdM, SPHR - Strategic HR Leader | Employee Engagement Expert
• Andrew Webber - Proven Leader | Consumer Product Innovation & Scaling
• Lida Tohidi - Award-Winning Product & Marketing Leader | Startup Advisor
• Gina (Gina Minks) Rosenthal - Global Product Marketing Manager | Technical Content Strategist
• Janel Van Beek - Business Strategist & Master Coach | Leadership & Change Expert
• Greg Phillips - Cloud Platform & Strategic Marketing Leader
• Ricardo Perez - Virtualization Architect | PowerFlex & VxRail Specialist
• Mike Berteletti, CISSP - Experienced IT Professional | Infrastructure & Security
• Chris Mojica - Technical Sales & Solutions Architect
• Matthew Leib - Data Center, Cloud & Storage Architect | Technical Writer & Analyst
• Michael Joffe - Global Technology Leader | P&L Management | SaaS & OEM
• Colleen Coll - Event Technology & Digital Media Specialist | Live Reporting

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